Contents

Lore

Once a powerful Icathian mage, Zilean became obsessed with the passage of time after witnessing his homeland's destruction by the Void. Unable to spare even a minute to grieve the catastrophic loss, he called upon ancient temporal magic to divine all possible outcomes. Having become functionally immortal, Zilean now drifts through the past, present, and future, bending and warping the flow of time around him, always searching for that elusive moment that will turn back the clock and undo Icathia's destruction.

Abilities

When he has enough Experience to finish an ally's level, he can right-click them to impart it. Zilean receives as much Experience as he gives. Cannot be used in combat.

Experience Rate: 2 / 3.5 / 5 / 6 / 12 at levels 6/11/16/18

Time Bomb

[Q]

Cost: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 Mana

Cooldown: 10 / 9.5 / 9 / 8.5 / 8 seconds

Range: 900

Area of Effect: 330

Active: Zilean tosses a time-delayed bomb to a location. The bomb sticks to the first unit which comes within a small area around it (prioritizes Champions). After 3 seconds it detonates, dealing magic damage to all surrounding enemies. Placing two bombs on a unit detonates the first bomb early, stunning all enemies in the blast.

Patch History

25 mages have more mana regen and base mana, but less mana growth. 5 other mages have more mana regen.

We’re increasing mana regen on the champions most affected by the changes to Doran's Ring and Last Chapter. Mages are also getting some changes to their mana pools and their mana growth. Overall, they’ll be up a bit of starting mana and mana regen, but be substantially down on mana per level.

v5.23Passive can no longer give a sarcastically small amount of experience.

To keep it simple, Zilean's new time bottle only ever finishing levels was nice - but more often than not, the necessary experience needed to complete someone's level was so small you only felt useful for using it a handful of times. Now Zil's a little less stingy with his wisdom and hands out a bit of overflow so you can reap more benefit from his time-traveling antics.

General

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ZILVENTURE : Once again has recommended item pages for both Mage and Support

Passive - Time in a Bottle

EXPERIENCE TRANSFER : Now gives at least 15% of Zilean's banked experience. Excess experience goes into the target's next level

In a world without mana potions (and generally less early mana regeneration), we've identified a few champions for some emergency rations, giving early mana boosts until they can get their footing and purchase items to make up the deficit. This also means we can really understand which champions relied on mana potions as a crutch to limp through the early to mid game, and we can give additional love if necessary.
Mana Regen

Zilean's passive is one of those ideas that's really neat in theory, but lackluster in execution. Manipulating experience is a slam dunk thematically, what with his wisdom and time-lord status, but ran into the same problems auras typically do - they either feel incredibly weak (even when balanced), or are tuned so you can feel their effects (in which case they're overpowered). Instead of dealing with the headache of an aura that affects an already-invisible strength (experience?), he's getting a brand new one: Time in a Bottle.

In essence, Zilean's time-bottle does the same thing as the previous passive, in the sense that it gives experience to allies nearby, but splits it into clear chunks that you and your allies can appreciate. Now Zilean players everywhere can feel cool about their contributions to a team - finishing a jungler's level so he can gank with his newly-ranked ultimate, or stacking one member of your time even higher to combine with Chronoshift for time-powered carry potential.

Lastly, we've got a bunch of changes to Time Bomb to make it feel much more responsive. They may look small in practice, but we dug in to solve a large number of player-reported issues (particularly associated with usability and visual clarity) so take a gander and let us know what you think. If you weren't the biggest fan of the Zileanaire, there's never been a better time to pick him up (we'll show ourselves out).

General

FLEXIBLE : Now has recommended items for both AP and support playstyles

NEW

Passive - Time in a Bottle

Zilean bottles experience over time. When he has enough experience stored to finish an ally's level, he can right-click them to give both himself and his ally the amount stored.

COOLDOWN : 120 seconds

EXPERIENCE RATE : 2/3.5/5/6/12 every 5 seconds (at levels 6/11/16/18)

NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO USE THAT : Time in a Bottle cannot be used in combat.

"Grandpa Zilean's wandered back into the patch notes in 5.13 for another quality-of-life change - this time centered around accidentally using Rewind when it would have no effect. You'd think someone that's been time traveling for centuries would have mastered this by now, but here we are."

W - Rewind

BE KIND : Rewind can no longer be cast when both Zilean's Q - Time Bomb and E - Time Warp are off cooldown.

"While we've been digging the future Zilean's update set out for him, we realize that we missed the mark numbers-wise (especially for midlane). These changes are all about enabling him to take risks on making intricate plays and ensuring he's rewarded should he succeed. "

"As with all changes that both increase complexity and skill-ceiling, Zilean saw a pretty dramatic shift last patch. While we want to give more time for players to learn how to use him effectively, this change enables his Q+W+Q combo that folks are used to. "

Q is now a lobbed skillshot that can land on an opponent or sit on the ground. If you land two, you get a 1.5 second stun (!). W no longer interacts with R so you don't have to play this weird "spam W" mini-game to get your ultimate back. At max ranks, E slows at 99% movement speed. Ninety nine percent.

IT IS TIME. It wasn't too long since the Chronokeeper was last in the spotlight, but to bring him back in a healthy way meant taking the time to sort through his problems one by one. Zilean's always had a ton of neat tricks (especially his signature move, Chronoshift), but has been held back, balance-wise, thanks to his oppressive "I'm-going-to-click-on-you" laning strength. Massive changes to Time Bomb seek to not only remedy this with a healthy dose of counterplay (skillshot sticky-bomb!) but let us play up the spell's exciting double-hit case by making it the largest non-ultimate AoE stun in the game (say that 10 times fast). We looked for a proper Zilean quote to end this, but all in good time.

[NEW]ZILEAN'S GOT A POWER GLOVE : Time Bombs are now a lobbed skillshot with fixed travel time. The Time Bomb sticks to enemies and allies near it. If nothing comes nearby, the bomb detonates normally.

[NEW]THAT WAS A BOMBERMAN REFERENCE : When Zilean gets two bombs on the same unit, the first bomb detonates immediately, stunning all enemies in the area for 1.5 seconds

[REMOVED]IT WAS A WEIRD INTERACTION : Rewind no longer reduces the cooldown of Chronoshift

E - Time Warp

DURATION : 2.5/3.25/4/4.75/5.5 seconds⇒ 2.5 seconds

SLOW AMOUNT : 55%⇒ 40%/55%/70%/85%/99% (yes, that is correct)

COOLDOWN : 20 seconds⇒ 15 seconds

COST : 80 mana⇒ 50/55/60/65/70 mana

RANGE : 700 (center of Zilean's hitbox to center of opponent's hitbox)⇒ 550 (edge of Zilean's hitbox to edge of opponent's hitbox) - this should be around a ~75 range reduction, which varies depending on how fat his target is

"While our stance on global passives is fairly well known (hidden power, impacting lanes outside of an opponent's control, etc), we typically don't like nerfing champions when they're down (as in unpopular or seen as underpowered). With Zilean's rise as a high-priority competitive and - by extension - normal pick, we can now at least reduce that global passive to a more manageable range. "

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